by Debra Dunbar
But the reasons were incidental. The effect was profound.
“The engine is worth more than the promissory note,” he said.
“Much more,” she agreed. “I believe the Tynes Engine is an incredible advance. Do you believe the guild will share our view?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he was forced to confess. “If they do not, they will value it at the cost of the metal. If they do, they will still claim that value, so that they can seize it and benefit from it.”
“Precisely. We need time. And to get time, we need to proceed in secrecy, out of sight of the guild.”
With a shock, he realized Lady Margaret was still talking of them together—we. Shock and hope. And excitement.
“Just to the end of the season,” he said. “That’s all that’s needed.”
“Then that is what I must get us.” As she spoke, the tension seemed to leave her body and she swayed closer to him than was strictly correct. He could actually feel the stir of her breath on his neck, and he shivered.
She whispered as the waltz came to an end, “We are on our own, you and I. You must trust me absolutely, Charles, as I must trust you. Both estates, all assets and liabilities, come together under Nightwood, in my name, until such time as we have Gilbee’s settlement and the guild is paid off.”
“But that would make us both liable—”
“Exactly. Until we have weathered this year, we would be in serious jeopardy,” she said. “We stand or fall together. We must make common cause, Charles, and we are stronger as two, are we not?”
She was standing too close, and his heart was thumping at a rate which would have fair burst the boiler on his machine.
He found he could not refuse.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
Hours later, when the ladies had withdrawn after dinner, Charles still worried over his decision.
George leaned over. “It must be serious, old man! You barely ate and you look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
They were watching. He schooled his face and stretched his mouth in a smile.
The Tynes Engine. His name, but not his engine. It would legally belong to Lady Margaret in exchange for a promise and a reduction in the threat from the guild.
Yet without that supposed protection, he knew the guild would have him. Another few weeks and they would come knocking on his door, especially if they saw the engine. They might still come for him, if whatever it was that Lady Margaret had planned did not work.
It was the better of two unpalatable choices, to pass everything to her in trust, rather than lose it to the guild.
A lot of trust, on his part. He’d given his word. He would have to sign a contract tomorrow.
“I am forced into a commitment from which there is no return,” he said.
George did not understand what he was really talking about, of course.
“Eh? Forced? A fool not to take it, Charles.” George hummed and glanced at the door that the ladies had passed through. “A fool not to have taken it immediately.”
Chapter 8
Enzili
It wasn’t the best place to recover: up a tree, in the hot and screaming dark.
She’d never thought that such tiny crickets and tree frogs could make a noise so powerful it made it hard to think.
And the drums were muttering again, out at Spanish Peak. They spoke to her, angry messages on the inconstant breeze. Not what she needed now.
The scent of blood was fresh in her nostrils, the wonderful, shocking feel of it on her fangs still reverberated through her. She’d taken enough, but her jaw ached for more and her eyes glistened like wet pebbles in the moonlight.
More! More! It was as if the crickets were screeching the word into her ears.
She was already climbing down, headfirst like a gecko, before she stopped herself.
They called her Enzili, the Goddess of Love.
In that guise, she’d visited the slaves of the Clement Valley estate tonight, the third estate on the road after Nightwood and Gilbee’s. She had given them her gifts of healing and pleasure; her message of patience and hope. They’d accepted her as Enzili, as they had at the other plantations.
She’d taken her tithe of blood in return—freely, gladly offered blood, and now she had to go. Had to.
If she could not resist the temptation of more now, she might undo all her work.
She was no more the Goddess of Love than she was the Queen of the Night, but it was easier and quicker for her people to accept her if she claimed the mantle of Enzili. And her gifts fitted neatly with their expectations of Enzili.
Unfortunately, just as the Goddess of Love had her dark alter ego, so did she.
Enzili was also the Goddess of Witches. Not the picture-book witches of warty noses and bat stew, nor the unfortunate, solitary women with a knowledge of herbs. No. Far closer to the mold of the Old Testament maleficarum—those who do genuine evil; the witches of the febrile imaginings that powered the Inquisition. Demons in human form. Evil personified.
Just as she was not the Goddess of Love, she was not the Goddess of Witches either. But there was within her a place where the demon lurked. A demon that would drink blood for the pleasure of it, that would find even greater pleasure in the dying terror of its victims.
The demon had a role. She acknowledged that. But not now, not here, not with these people.
The demon had woken in the slaves’ huts. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t the offerings of blood given to her as the Goddess of Love. It had been the slave with his back lacerated by the whip. Barely conscious, locked in his suffering, dying. She had eased his pain, begun the healing of his wounds, saved his life, even as she felt the demon wake.
Pain and terror were the harvest of the demon, and having tasted the whipped slave’s, it wanted more. Demanded more. Now.
No.
But she had tarried too long. Something was out of place.
So she clung to the trunk of the tree, head down, serpent-still, stark naked, rivulets of sweat running down her body and stinging her eyes. She was trembling with the effort, breathing heavily, and listening, listening, seeking beyond the screeching noises of the night...
To the sounds of someone approaching.
Alone.
Now she could see the light—and a man ambling, barefoot, humming a tune, carrying a lantern, and swigging from a wine bottle as he came. She could smell the oil, smell his sweat, the food and drink on his breath.
Go back! She wanted to shout it out.
He did not.
She let herself tumble down to the ground, flipping over and landing on her feet.
The noise startled the man, and he lifted the lantern high above his head to peer into the cover of the bushes and trees.
Man? Barely.
It was hot. He’d left his jacket off and his shirt was all undone, showing his fair skin. Lightly muscled, trim belly, no more than a hint of hair across his chest. A youth, eighteen or nineteen, with wavy blond hair gleaming in the light of the lamp. Sweat glistened on his face. His blue eyes were shadowed.
Go back!
Her jaws were aching. Her muscles were trembling, but still locking her in place. If he went away now...right now...
But there was an arrogance to the young man, lord of all he surveyed.
“Who’s there?” he called and stepped into the bushes, letting the light of the lamp seek her out.
“What the hell are you doing...”
She knew who it was: William Clement, son and heir of Edward Clement, owner of the Clement Valley plantation. And he knew her. He’d attended the dinner at Nightwood. He’d seen her. His face showed his startled recognition.
The demon came forth.
He had no chance. She leaped from the shadows like a jaguar, and her fangs had sunk into his throat before he’d even dropped the bottle.
He thrashed and fought, but he was dying as he fell to the ground.
The lantern went out.
There was a muted
scream that quickly faded to a bubbling cry. The sound of his terrified, scrabbling hands in the dirt. Her grunts of pleasure. The brief drumming of his heels.
A moan.
Then nothing but the shrieking creatures of the night.
Chapter 9
Lady Margaret
It was a simple, bare room above the chandler’s shop, in the middle of Grande Street. There was no brass nameplate on the door, no stern portrait of a bewhiskered founder exhorting employees to greater efforts.
A plain room, where men came and lives were lost or fortunes won. Lady Margaret wondered whether she was the first woman ever to set foot in the unofficial office of the traders’ guild, where letters of credit and promissory notes bound the business of this part of the world together like pale sinews.
Mr. Wolcott certainly had no experience of entertaining ladies in this place.
It was hot, smelled of stale pipe tobacco, and the chairs were uncomfortable. On a brighter note, he had been able to provide coffee while they waited.
The obese Mr. Harney rushed in, full of apologies.
“A veritable hubbub down there,” he said. “It’s all concerning the regrettable death of Mr. Clement.”
“Of Clement Valley?” Lady Margaret asked.
“Young Mr. Clement. The son and heir,” Harney clarified. He paused, clearly feeling he ought to provide more information, and unsure exactly how he should do so.
“Killed by wild dogs, it seems,” he said at last. “Horrific, I heard, begging your pardon, my lady.” He made a vague gesture, to and fro, in front of his cravat, to indicate the severe damage he felt he could not describe in the presence of a lady. “His throat...ahh...”
“Wild dogs? On St. Mark’s?” she said. These were reasonable questions that a woman who knew nothing about the tragedy might be expected to ask.
“It is indeed unusual,” Wolcott said. “Dogs stolen away from owners, perhaps. Or strays who’ve come to live in the jungle. Maybe kept by the maroons near Spanish Peak.”
“Yes, that would make sense,” Harney agreed, his jowls wobbling as he nodded emphatically. “The cursed maroons. The captain should take the soldiers up there and clear them out.”
It was the last thing she wanted to discuss, but these men were influential and such a notion to deal with ‘wild dogs’ and maroons might gather momentum. She couldn’t let that go by without doing anything to stop it.
“Where did it happen?” she said.
“My lady?”
“This canine attack? Where did it happen?” she repeated.
“Well, at the Clement plantation.” Harney squeezed his sweaty bulk into his chair, so they both faced her across the table.
“The dogs came all the way from Spanish Peak, across the entire island, disturbing no one else, and chose to attack William Clement in his father’s house, without anyone knowing anything about them? Not even the people in the house?”
Both of them sat up straighter, ill at ease with the direction of her questions and unable to answer the main part.
“Actually, not in the house,” Wolcott said, perhaps thinking it easier to answer the lesser part. “Far enough away for the noise of the attack to be swallowed up in the general sounds of the night. It was late, too. People a-bed, you understand.”
“Precisely where?” Lady Margaret asked. She had accidentally come to the very thing she needed—a topic to put these men on the defensive before they spoke of business—and she would exploit it as thoroughly as she exploited her name.
Now beads of sweat began to gleam on Mr. Wolcott’s forehead. There were things that gentlemen knew, but didn’t speak of in front of ladies, such as visits to the slaves at night. Yet he could not lie outright and be caught later.
“The bottom of the gardens.”
“Near the houses of the plantation workers?”
Lady Margaret had already understood that the word slave was not to be used casually in polite company, despite the whole island’s economy being based on it.
“Yes, my lady. We should really—”
“And what was he doing there? At night?”
There was a clearing of throats and exchange of glances. A pantomime of deferment to the other.
Eventually, it was Wolcott who spoke, mumbling slightly and looking down. “Probably looking to the welfare of the plantation workers, my lady.”
“I see. The welfare of the workers. Late at night, with all the house a-bed. How remarkably dutiful of the late young Mr. Clement.”
They weren’t accustomed to conversing with aristocracy, or women, but they certainly couldn’t mistake the icy edge of sarcasm in her voice. They were taken aback and there was silence for several seconds.
“I am here on quite another matter,” she said, and was gratified to see the enormous relief on their faces. “A matter of the future of Nightwood.”
“The earl wishes to sell, my lady?” Harney tried beaming at her, as if she were a child. “Then I suppose the earl’s agent will be joining you soon?”
“The disposal of Nightwood is no longer within the purview of my father.” She could not keep that edge out of her voice.
“I don’t understand,” Wolcott said, his brow furrowed. “Has he sold it to some concern in London?”
She took the deeds from her valise and laid them on the table. Deeds from London with all the stamps and seals appended that made her the sole owner of the Nightwood Estate of St. Mark’s in the Leeward Islands.
“I…I…gracious! Is this a…a dowry?” Harney’s jaw quivered with his shock. “Might we expect your fiancé to arrive?”
Lady Margaret could see him thinking back to her behavior at the dinner.
Their reaction was exactly the blockheaded stupidity she wanted to avoid, but she had to tread with care. Although the law entitled her to property, custom would entitle them to ignore her wishes until a ‘responsible, male relative’ were available. She wanted to grind her teeth.
“It is not a dowry,” she said, tapping her finger on the deeds. “It is mine outright, from my father, Lord Willoughby-Lazaure; gifted to me in accordance with property laws which are recognized throughout the British dominions.”
She might as well have slapped their faces.
A swift reminder that the legal document in front of them represented the will of the earl who, in their minds, more than any other, influenced the West Indian trade.
Would they care to go against his wishes? A man who could cut their business in half with a few words in the right ears in London.
Evidently not.
There was a measured nodding of heads, and then, as the implications sank in, their eyes grew rounder—such a gift to bestow on his youngest daughter. Such munificence. An entire estate.
She wanted to laugh—manic, bitter laughter. She wanted to scream. She allowed no sign of it to show on her face.
The earl had not handed the deeds across to a favored daughter as a sign of his love. They had arrived by courier in a cold bundle with legal documents detailing the termination of all her allowances and the changes in the earl’s will which excluded her from it.
She had expected them, after the last meeting with her father.
That meeting was burned in her mind. Other men might have been in a rage. The earl was not like that. Never in his life had he raised his voice in her hearing. His most vicious pronouncements were delivered in little more than a whisper.
“Not content with associating our name with the most bohemian, the most degraded of English society, you now parade your allegiances in front everyone, and glory at our defeat.”
He was premature, but he was right. Not this year, maybe not next, but soon, within the life of this Parliament, and against the furious opposition of the earl and his friends, it would come.
Abolition.
The destruction of the evil trade that was founded on the exploitation of slaves. A trade that made Caribbean plantation owners wealthy.
“They would have achieved
it without me,” she had replied, goaded by his attack into pomposity. “It is not I, so much as a swelling of righteous opinion throughout the land, against which you struggle.”
He had not listened. Would not listen.
Nightwood was his revenge: to isolate her and tie her sole source of income to the very trade she found so loathsome; to make her the master of that ship, so that when Parliament sank the business, it would carry her down with it.
Her eyes cleared of memories to find Wolcott and Harney looking expectantly at her.
It was time for the next hurdle, an even larger one to clear.
“I am here to inform you that I have today signed an agreement with Mr. Tynes, taking Gilbee’s estate into Nightwood, in its entirety.”
Harney gasped, and Wolcott’s sallow face paled.
“My lady! No! Pray there is yet time to undo this.”
“Lady Margaret, Tynes does not have the deeds,” Harney said. “You have not paid him, have you? He will flee on the first boat!”
“Gentlemen, please.”
In their excitement, they had stood. She signaled them to return to their chairs.
She could see in their eyes that she had lost some of her advantage, and was back to being a silly woman playing at commerce.
They both restarted explaining to her how impossible it was.
She held up her hands to stop them.
“I am well aware that Mr. Gilbee has not surrendered the deeds yet, and that Mr. Tynes’ full possession of the estate was subject to your promissory note, of which you were so kind as to inform me at my dinner. In full knowledge of that, my agreement with Mr. Tynes is that I take the promissory note on myself, and I, or my family in England, will deal with Mr. Gilbee.”
The reminder that they had breached confidence was like the touch of a dagger to their bellies, lying as it did alongside the reminder of who they mistakenly thought they were ultimately dealing with—the earl.
If he were to know of their breach, then a few words in the right ears would not just damage their business, it could very well lead to them losing everything, and being faced with the same jail they threatened other people with.